NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — A towering plant off Tidewater Drive is not only blooming for the first (and only) time after being planted two decades ago, it’s actually one of several currently blooming in Norfolk.
No it’s not a Truffula Tree from the “The Lorax” (which does has a real-life cousin), but it certainly looks like something straight out of Dr. Seuss
The plant’s called an Agave Americana, a member of the asparagus family native to Mexico and the southern U.S. It’s commonly known as the “century plant” because people used to think they bloomed only once every 100 years.
That’s actually about as long as it can be for some, but most typically take around two to three decades to blossom after being planted, about as long as those who live and work in the Cottage Road Park neighborhood had been waiting for theirs to bloom.
“I have walked past it for 15 years wondering and waiting for the day,” said Norfolk’s Gregory Constanza, who started documenting the plant’s progress on Facebook back in late April.
At the time it was already about as tall as the tiny home it sits in front of at 7487 Wellington Road, where a woman named Sheryl Berry lived for more than two decades.
Her son Shaia Casey says Sheryl planted it nearly two decades ago in front of her bedroom window. Sadly she passed away on April 4, right before it started to bloom.
“It’s a bummer, man, it’s just like a week afterwards, she didn’t even get to see it,” Casey said. “She was planning on it, she would sit on that porch for eight, sometimes 10 hours a day and if she wasn’t looking at the traffic she’d dart her eyes over at that plant … sitting out there waiting for that son of a gun to sprout.”
In the meantime, neighbors say plans to eventually demolish the home have been put on hold, giving the neighborhood a sight to behold.
“We knew they were going to tear the house down eventually, but it was like ‘wait a minute this thing is growing,'” said John Moscoe, who walks the neighborhood regularly. “I started talking with the neighbors and they were hoping that they wouldn’t tear the house down until the thing had bloomed.”
Moscoe jokes it was basically just a giant asparagus at first but “now it’s starting to bloom, it’s beautiful.”
It’s also been a special treat for U.S. Postal Service carrier William Owens, who’s walked the route for the past eight years.
“The yellow parts, they’ve just been starting to open up, the blooms … it just looks like Dr. Seuss,” said a laughing Owens on a sweltering July afternoon.
If you’re looking to ride by and check it out, you’ve got about two weeks left before the plant dies, never to bloom again. That’s just another one of its funky traits, along with being able to be made into mezcal (Agave Azul is the kind that’s used to make tequila).
And ironically this isn’t the only century plant in bloom in Norfolk. David Knepper sent in photos of one in Ghent at 623 Baldwin Avenue, which just started blooming back in May, Google Street View shows.
A smaller one also just recently started to bloom at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, two years after it saw another century plant bloom.
